"A Guy Thing" shows just how easily a bad movie can happen to good actors. No matter how hard they tried, Jason Lee, Selma Blair and Julia Stiles could not breathe life into this mindless script.
The story comes from Greg Glienna, the same man responsible for "Meet The Parents." The slapstick style humor found in that film is here but to a far lesser effect. Perhaps part of the reason is that director Chris Koch ("Snow Day") never gets a handle on the material.
"A Guy Thing" opens with Paul (Lee), an average "nice guy" who is engaged to his "perfect girl" - Karen (Blair). Although he loves Karen, her family makes him nervous, despite apparently having welcomed him with open arms and a waiting job.
At his bachelor party, Paul succumbs to male tradition and allows his friends to ply him with liquor and tiki dancers. Since Paul fully intends to behave himself, his dimwitted best friend Jim (Shawn Hatosy) poses as the groom when the dancers show up.
After a night of chatting with the cheerful Becky (Stiles), Paul wakes up bleary-eyed, hung-over and lying next to a naked Becky. Assuming the worst, he tells Karen a lie to cover up.
"It's a guy thing," his friends tell him when Paul confesses, but when Becky shows up at his wedding, the whole thing blows up in his face.
Enjoyment of this film should come from watching Paul's antics as he tries to keep his little secret from reaching Karen. But Paul's ridiculous failure to hold our attention makes sure the laughter will be more incredulous than amused.
The characters are paper-thin, with contrived explanations for their behavior. Becky is flighty and free-spirited, while Karen is a decent person.
Most romantic comedies are about men falling in love with the right women, only after proposing to the wrong one. The problem with "A Guy Thing" is that Karen isn't a typical wrong woman - just the wrong woman for Paul. Their complete lack of chemistry makes viewers wonder why he proposed to her to begin with.
If this was the typical bachelor party movie, none of the characters would show any significant growth and the relationships at the end of the movie would be unchanged from those at the start. Preventing this is the fact that the script has some twists, but Lee's acting takes a downward turn that keeps any of the subtleties of character development from reaching their potential. If not for a soliloquy towards the end of the film, his emotional change would have gone completely unnoticed.
There is much faux humor about Paul pretending to have diarrhea, getting an STD and having to get medication, Becky's ex-boyfriend with a steroid rage problem, a rehearsal dinner spiked with pot, and dirty pictures found by a young boy that end up stuck together, not with glue.
The jokes are lame. The physical gags are lamer. There are desperate attempts to mine class warfare and drunken Irish stereotypes for generic jokes as well. But while the film may be worth getting out of the chilly weather for about an hour and a half, it's not worth the money shelled out to see it.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
